Approaches to Listening Podcast Episode 10: Mechanisms of Flexible Listening

William: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Approaches to Listening. I'm joined again by Patrick Summers. Thank you for coming back, Patrick. I appreciate it.

Patrick: Of course.

William: Today we're going to discuss where musicians tend to get stuck in their listening, trying to identify common listening attitudes and practices that have a significant hold, I would say a restrictive hold, especially on musicians. So we're going to start with this question: What filters are easiest to get stuck in when you're listening?

Patrick: I think it kind of depends on your makeup, like your background, your teachers growing up, what they encouraged you or how they encouraged you to practice, and the purpose of that practice. Maybe it's to be good. Maybe it's to perform. That's the reason you took lessons. Maybe it's just to impress a girl or impress your coworkers. I think it kind of depends on that background.

William: I agree. And I was thinking about that, specifically thinking about academic musicians because I think there's that shared background of university music study. And especially in that background, I see a tendency to get stuck in analysis and critique, particularly. And it's not hard to come up with an answer, a hypothesis why that is. They're measurable. They're what the system wants. You talked about people's expectations. What does your teacher expect of you? And if you're surrounded by people, students, peers, faculty who have shared expectations that are rooted in these measurable things, these measurable approaches to listening, then, of course, those are going to be really, really well-practiced and well-invested in. When those two meet, when you've invested a lot and practiced a lot, well, how else are you going to do the thing? How else are you going to listen?

Patrick: That's exactly what I was going to say. If that's your foundation, if that's the makeup from when you're being raised, then it's not like you're in trouble. But that's the thing that takes hold and continues to be perpetuated in your practice or your lack thereof.

William: Well, it's easy, it's such a comfortable rut because when you're thinking about music using analysis or critique, then there are just all these benefits to it. You can talk about it with others. You can be like, "Oh, today I practiced the coda working specifically on wrist movement." And you know if you went to someone and told your teachers like, "I really loved practicing this week. I had so much fun." You can imagine the next question. “So what did you do? What progress did you make? Have you finally picked a fingering for that one run you always miss?” It doesn't sound as valid in that setting.

Patrick: Yeah. Because like you say, there's no metrics to that. Like If you were to just go about your practice and was just like, "I just liked it.” “Why did you like it?" “I don't know. I just liked it.”

William: Well, it's interesting because the experiential filter, to me, represents the original approach to listening. That's why we do music. But it's funny because that original approach is found, I would say, somewhere between organically and passively. You don't have to work to listen to, say, “Time’s Scar” from Chrono Cross and be like, "This is great. I love this. I want to listen to that again." It just happens. And so there's this almost unintentional aspect that taps into the feeling side.

Patrick: Yeah. And that's interesting because one of the things that I thought of with that just now is that that seems very childish. That seems very youthful or young, and it doesn't make up a metric of being educational or just being university-ish. It sounds like it's simply young, naive, which I'm sure that as we discuss this more, that that foundation and that love that came from being there is the thing that we're trying to maintain and perpetuate for our listening practices because, yeah, you're right. It disappears because we have to have all these filters now that are measured and metered.

William: Yeah. And I was thinking about, I guess you'd call them the amateur. Just those who could have any level of experience with music, but they're not doing it professionally. There's something really enviable about that position where it's like “I don't have to engage with music any particular way. I just do what I want.”

Patrick: You know, that's the thing that was annoying to me because--I went to community college when I first started. I didn't even think I would ever go to college. So I just did community college to get the Pell Grant so I can have some extra money because it was so cheap. And I got so annoyed at these amateurs that just talked about everything they listened to all the time. That's all they would talk about. “Did you hear this album or this artist on this performance, on this concert? Did you hear how they did this and how they did that? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, "Dude, just leave me alone, man. I just want to do music." But then I realized, man, that's something special, something that they were probably taught to forget eventually if they continued.

William: It's true. And I think it's something worth going back to, trying to find again. And I was thinking about that because if you wanted to take the opening question, what filters are easiest to get stuck into, you could apply the experiential to that group and be like, "Well, they're stuck in the experiential filter. They're just feeling the music, having a good time," and getting you know those experiences, maybe not the knowledge or yeah, but they're feeling it lots.

And I was thinking about that--is there anything wrong with that or undesirable about that situation where it's like, "Oh, I just feel my music. It's just chill." And I can only think of one, in that if that's all you have, I don't know that you'd feel you have choice over your listening experiences. Then you're subject to whatever the mood of the day is, whatever your phone gives you on shuffle. I think of that shuffle experience where it's like, "Oh, I'm just going to shuffle. I don't want that. No, that's not it. That's not it. That's not it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We'll go with this."

Especially today where there's so many platforms that will push certain music on you, I do have an issue with that where it's like, oh man, I envy that, but there needs to be something else at the end of the day, I think. So my only complaint about, "Oh, I just listen. I just have fun all the day," is I think there will come a point where that doesn't work and what do you do then?

Patrick: Yeah. And I think that that also speaks to our background of being kind of cerebral people, you and I. At least I feel like that I am. I was in a lot of rock bands and jazz bands growing up. And a lot of the times because that's not a higher art, then all they have is their knowledge of the differences of the art.

And it's similar to classical music and the higher music, I guess, if you can call it that. The way that this pianist or this performer creates is stellar, and the other ones are better. And so you do have that same amount of getting the knowledge of any singular work. But I think for this lower art, if you will, like the way that you know like the Beach Boys, the way that they performed on this day at this venue is their favorite song or their favorite way that that performance group performed that song. But that's what I got annoyed with, was that they would keep on harping on a certain concert or album, a moment, instead of like the song in general, like the recorded from you know a certain studio.

And so I feel like for those kind of people who don't have much else aside from, they just enjoy to play, then I don't think that they're ever going to lose that passion until something else takes it away. And I don't think it'll ever be music. I think it'll be something else like life or something because they have the passion of gaining that knowledge instead of just playing. Because with these lower arts, you only get so far. There's only so many licks. There's only so many chord changes and that kind of stuff. There are only so many rhythmic changes that you have. There's only so many of that when it gets to these rock and stuff. And to replace the progress of skills, they continue to be passionate about their knowledge of the simple things and the foundation. And that knowledge, I mean, that can go on forever because there's so many rock groups that recorded so many different places, performed so many different places.

William: Yeah. I think I'm understanding. There is this feeling side like in the performance where it's like, you're doing the same thing again and again, you know only so many licks, like you said. But there's this knowledge aspect that continues to grow and expand.

And it's like when do you gain all the knowledge? You don't--keep learning. And so that combined with the experiential, the feeling side, is a really happy combination because it's like, "Oh, I have my passion, I have my fun, but I'm getting something more." And I think that's exactly what the thinking filters offer, is they'll offer more than you currently have.

The problem is when you get stuck in the attitude that just everything is about getting more. Everything is about getting more and you forget the moment because it's like, "Oh, I need to do more." You do a performance and you're like, "Well, I messed up in these three spots in these three distinct ways. I need to do more." It's like you just performed. You did the thing that you built your whole life around doing. And yeah, that gets exhausting quick.

And so I was thinking of a follow-up question. How do you intentionally engage with something that comes naturally, maybe even passively? Another way of asking it is how do you use the experiential filter intentionally in your listening? Say you're an academic musician and you sit down at the piano and you're like, "Okay, I need to practice for four hours today." How would you get the feeling filter in there to get some of that passion going?

Patrick: Yeah. Well, I don't have the answer to that. The first thing that I thought of was something that I teach my students is that everything that you do in the practice room is segmented, and it's never you don't go to the practice room to do this. You go to the practice room to do these things. I need to make sure that they don't get bored or get tired or overwhelmed or go into the passive mode of just repetition. So I tell them that whenever they go to the practice room, they don't do this. They do these things. So if they're going to practice a passage that they messed up once, then they do it for 10 to 15 minutes, and then they go to something else, and then they come back, and then they go to something else, maybe another thing.

So I think that that's one way to keep that filter going. If you're natural at something, then you just change it up. One of my favorite movies is Dodgeball. The really nerdy guy is like he's in the gym where like nobody ever works out. It's just you know average joe's gym. People just go there to hang out. And so the guy, the nerd with the big glasses, I forget his name, but he's always has a magazine in his hand. He's always like moving. But yeah, he's going to go shock the glutes later and maybe do some hammies later, but he never does anything. He says, "Doing this, this, this, this." So he's always moving around, doing stuff. And because of that, he's never gets old of average joe's gym. If you take an hour to do squats, then you're going to run into being so bored. And so for piano and for musicians, where our muscles, where our exercisable things are infinitely smaller than, say, the glutes or the hamstrings or the quads, we need to make sure that we don't overwork those little small things.

And so that's what I tell my students, is just break everything up. So maybe that's part of the answer. I know that that's what I do. Being on break right now, I'm trying to practice and trying to record, and I just do like little half-hour segments throughout the day. Just space them out. Whenever I get bored, I stop. Immediately stop. I don't try to push through.

William: That's interesting. If I'm not mistaken, I think that's just good understanding of how humans work. If you keep doing the same thing over and over and over you're going to get diminishing returns. Thinking about this idea, I had a couple cursory ideas, and then one hypothetical, I wanted to run by you. So the general idea is like maybe you could think of the why. “Why am I doing this piece?” You know, that's a hard thing. I'm not sure that's going to work every day. But occasionally, that's important to tap into. I've seen lessons where the teachers really effectively are like, "Think about it. Why are you doing what you're doing?" And then they're like, "Oh, yeah." I remember working with a student who was singing “Giants in the Sky.” And at one point, I just was like, "Stop, stop, stop. There are giants in the sky." And the student woke up and they're like, "Oh, yeah, there are giants in the sky!" Then they sang the song and it was good. And then the next time we met, they didn't, but for a day we had it.

But then it's interesting. You mentioned about segments. I feel like to get into the feeling realm that sparks a lot of passion, you kind of have to move beyond the details and connect with the big picture, the whole, which you know distills down to an idea or a story more than the segments. And so once again, that's tricky to articulate, but here's the thing I want to explore.

And it actually has to do with tempo because when we think about feeling in a piece, tempo is one of those major factors that determines how a piece feels. And I think that it could be said we all have an internal tempo as a person. I wake up, my tempo is extremely slow. I'm just going slow. Before I perform, my tempo's crazy fast. But here, when we engage with music, we're trying to portray and, I think, embody a different tempo or a specific tempo, let's say a specific tempo. And so if that tempo we're trying to convey and embody doesn't line up with what's happening in our head and in our body, I don't think we're going to be in that feeling/passionate realm as much as we could be.

You think of a high-stakes performance of a slow piece. And your brain's just spinning around and you're trying to convey calm and serenity. To me, listening bridges that gap where you can tap into that calm and serenity and hopefully match your internal tempo to the piece. So you're literally feeling what you're conveying. And I think that just gives you a really good chance of conveying that to the audience because something doesn't sit right with, you're freaking out and the audience is like, "This is nice." I think something needs to change. There's progress to be made there. What do you think of that idea?

Patrick: Yeah. So actually, the thing that I went back to was when we did our recital recently, the Press Play one, the prelude that I did by Chopin, the E minor prelude. I think that I lined up in that one. I really did feel like that. The way that you described it, I really felt like that I was lining up because I mean, like I teared up at one point during the song, and it was like right at the beginning. So I pressed the first B. And then I just held it. And then I went on. But that's one of the few moments that I felt like everything matched for me.

And I think my thought is, is that if we wanted to figure out how to do that in the practice room, I always use a metronome when I'm doing technical exercises. I'm always using a metronome when I'm going to start a song. I don't use it throughout, but especially for technical exercises, if you can make those, if you can bridge the gap, like you say, about the internal tempo to the external tempo, then I think that's an easier way, that's an easier thing to replicate all the time for technical exercises. So what I do is I set the metronome to like 60 you know for the second. Sometimes it's at like 50, sometimes it's 70, but it's slower than what I feel like it should be. So if the tempo feels slow, then that's the right tempo when I'm doing my technical exercises. And so I start off with eighth notes, whether it's scales or arpeggios, and then I vary them, vary the rhythms, eighth notes that turn straight into triplets that turn straight into sixteenths. If I'm doing a chromatic scale in thirds up, then what I do is like 16th notes. And then while one hand is doing 16th, if I'm going up, one hand is doing 16th, the other one goes into a quintuplet.

So that way, like my technical exercises are always changing and always expanding. So for example, if I start on thirds, two beats later, I'm at fourth, and then a tritone, then a fifth, and then everything gets expanded. And so these technical exercises ensure that my tempos are ranging and so that I can match external to internal, if that makes sense.

William: Yeah. And I like that practical application because there are some practical applications that I've seen like in university programs, one being a yoga class for musicians. I'd like to see that slowing down, practicing your breathing--which once again, breathing is a vital element. Especially for musicians who don't have to breathe to play. I think that idea is so underrated. So there's yoga. And then there's the exercise you detailed, just syncing that up. But tying this back to the Beach Boys really quick, I like this idea because it gives you an aspect of choice over your feeling because you think about the Beach Boys, if they're just feeling their music, and you know one day, they're like, "I'm not feeling it. I don't know if I can perform." And I've worked with musicians who, “I'm just not feeling it. It's already over,” and it's like, "Whoa, well, you can do something about that." And having a specific is so helpful. And I think when you can combine thinking, this repeatable process that's measurable as a connector to the feeling, that's like a golden ticket in.

Patrick: Yeah. And I think that that's why I'm drawn to jazz so often and why I started there is because the entry fee for jazz is pretty low because, it's just I say that people will hate before that. I guess maybe they'll argue with me about it. But like groove. It takes decades to master, sure. Like nobody grooves like Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock or Count Basie. Like some people can just groove. Billy Cobham. He just grooves. But the reason why they were able to spend that much time on it is because they were able to access it at the beginning of their studies. At the very foundational level, they were able to access it.

And that's why rock, that's why jazz and that's why simple Mozart, simple Haydn, simple Bach, that's why those are beginner pieces because the entry point is smaller and it's less, it's smaller than something like Rachmaninoff. The entry fee is smaller, and so it's more accessible.

And so when the Beach Boys, when they're tired, and this goes with my work in musical theater, doing repertory theater where you do eight shows on the weekend of two different musicals and you do that for a month or a month and a half, maybe two months, three months. The key is to have a director and a music director who can teach the actors how to operate within a tempo, within a pacing of a show that goes in and out of the music. And that's how they can do so many shows at one time. When, not if, when they need to fall back onto it, they fall back onto the pacing that they've established in rehearsal.

And so the performances then become a matter of pacing, and then what you were saying, then pacing, then plus. You can get into it easier if you have that foundation. So I think that you're right in that.

William: Yeah. I was actually thinking of a Miyazaki quote because I think that one of the things academic musicians get into, because I'm sure you've had this experience or worked with people who have this experience where, say, the brain's running a million miles a second and it just you can't get out. You feel you're stuck. My solution to that is, you need to find a moment. Because right now, you're nowhere. You're everywhere all at once. You need to find a moment to settle down. And pacing, I think, helps you find that. But it is interesting. I like this Miyazaki quote because it, I think, sheds some light into that. So he said, "To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here now means to lose the possibility of being countless other potential selves."

And you think about an academic musician who's trying to be the very best they can and in their classes and their lessons, they're getting the tools to be the very best they can. To be in the moment means to let go of that because you're delivering what you have now. And I don't think there's a better solution than that, but you have to let go of, "Oh, my vibrato's not as good as Renée Fleming's. I don't have the breath control of Jessye Norman." It's like, "You don't. But you're here and you're going to perform." And so those other potential selves for this performance, maybe bid them farewell. You probably should.

Patrick: You know, one of my favorite movies is The Last Samurai. And I've probably said this in a previous episode. I use this. And I use this with my students when they ask me questions about like, well, especially beginner ones, “I just can't coordinate. I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do this." And so the premise of The Last Samurai was that it took place Civil War era around there. I forget the time period. But it's back in the day when guns were new.

And so Tom Cruise plays one of the generals or the commanders of the army. He goes to fight the Japanese, and he gets captured. They bring them up into their city up in the mountains and it becomes wintertime. And so he's stuck there with them. With his enemy, the people that he took years to kill, and they were his enemies, now they're stuck with each other.

They don't want to kill them because they're honorable. He doesn't want to kill them because he'll get killed because he's one against everybody. There's a moment in there though when springtime is coming where the samurai are outside. They're using their wooden swords to do some drills to do their meditation. And he picks up one of the swords and stands in line. And then he gets hit and berated and all these kind of things. He gets made fun of all this kind of stuff. But the last thing the person says with the commander of the general, the one who's training the swordsman, the samurai, he says, "Too many minds. You mind the grass. You mind the feet. You mind the hands. You mind the sword. You mind the opponent. You mind his eyes. Too many minds. Too many minds.”

And then that's when he started to teach the character is that like you're saying, to get into that moment or if you want to get rid of the too many minds, then yeah, there has to be a mechanism to focus at that moment.

And for musicians, that mechanism is either falling back onto technique, which then robs the audience of your performance, or you fall back into something that can perpetuate or that can expand your creativeness, which is listening because that's the only filter that you can use to bring yourself into the moment, aside from falling back on the past or hoping for the future, you just tune in to what you're doing.

Too many minds, tune into what you're doing one step at a time, I think, like what you're saying.

William: And it's a scary idea to tell a performer. It's like, "Just listen. Focus on that.”

Patrick: “Where's the metrics?”

William: Yeah. Right. But I think that's just exactly right, where it's like we haven't focused sufficiently on listening. I haven't seen a model outside of jazz where it's vital. You have to do it. If you don't do it, you're aurally blind. It's like you don't know where you are or really what you're doing.

Patrick: Well, yeah. And I think that when you get to the highest level, like say if you're at the top school for piano performance and you are trying to focus in and hone in on a certain part of your skill. You have to be so cognizant of such little details. And especially if you can't be listening to yourself, you'll never know if your technique is actually doing things. So when you're a singer, it's hard to listen to yourself because you have this whole filter of your skin and your bone structure and then your emotional connection to the voice that can throw you off. And so like for singers, it is essential to be able to feel what it is that you're producing. But the only way that you can understand how you're feeling and the production of that is if you record yourself and listen back. Even if you have the greatest teacher who telling you, "Yes, that sounds right," then even if you're producing that is not connected to your perception, it's just the perception of physicality and not the perception of listening to yourself. And so there is that extra step that singers have to take.

But for us who have external instruments, it is an easy way we can listen to ourselves. And the only way that we can fine-tune the tiniest of details is to listen to what the sound does in reaction to our physical alterations. And if there isn't that connection with listening, then you're never going to reach that spot to where I believe you would ultimately want to be.

William: Yes. Let's switch gears. I did want to ask how much the where plays a role in how we listen. I would be really interested to do some polls on this, haven't done them yet, where it's like, "Oh, in a classroom, how do you listen versus a practice room versus a studio, whether that's a studio class, studio recital, your lesson, or a paid concert?" I'm just curious. You know I think that where we are, that can contribute to the rut.

And that's especially, well, maybe it might be extra detrimental in practice rooms and performance halls. But I think at the end of the day, you need to realize, "Oh, this is my space. This is probably how I'm going to listen. I'm in a classroom. I'm going to start analyzing." And I think you should mix it up. I think you should throw in some of the other filters so your default doesn't become this dried out, rote thing. Because as soon as listening becomes rote, I think it's pretty much over.

Patrick: Yeah. So are you saying apply different filters, like say, in a classroom setting? Or any setting, but like apply different filters anywhere?

William: Just challenge the default at least a little bit to see what else is there. I think that's the thing is that your perception, which can be very altered by your listening, can get locked in, where you're like, "I'm looking for these things." And as soon as you find them, it's like, "Oh, I've done the job. I found the things." It's like, "Okay, but what about everything outside?" It's important to tap into those regularly.

And I think by challenging how you listen, you can do that. But I think that the spaces, going back to the musical theater analogy, that can kind of be that mechanism, another mechanism where it's like, "Oh, this is this space. Let's be cognizant of how I listen in this space and make sure that that doesn't get stiff."

Patrick: Yeah. I think that if there's something that I could add to it, because I think you pretty much summed it up, is that you don't want to go into default. You don't want to go into automatic. That's the bad part of for me, anyways, that rut, that's the thing that you always want to avoid. And so perhaps listening is the answer to that. It's hard. And we're not trying to bash educational settings. We both work in education, you know and that's what we're passionate about. I think we're just trying to add something extra to round out students and professors and curriculum.

It's hard for students sometimes when they go into a classroom setting, for example, and they're told, "Good job for doing this thing. Good job on critically analyzing what I assigned you. Excellent work. Here's your grade. Good job. Wonderful.” They're kind of forced into an analytical pillar. And more often than not, they're assigned what to listen to, right? And that's not a bad thing. Again, where do you start, right? Where does a student start? But I think that if there's an extra level of if you give them time, the students the space in the classroom and outside. So directed studies, for example, within the classroom and then congratulate them on listening to something that they want to listen to. If we can build that next step, I think that can be an easy way to apply more filters. It's to be directed study. So that way, the students have a launching off point to healthy outside listening.

William: I think of the experiences I've had where I tried to explore something in a classroom that was rooted in analysis. And I've had two experiences. One, I've either had my favorite classroom experiences, or I walk away kind of embarrassed because the teachers have no idea what to do with that. They're like, "I can't verify that. I don't know what to add to that." It's hard in that moment. What is the teacher supposed to do? Their job, they have to submit a document to the school that says, "I'm going to do these things so you can measure them and know what this student will walk out here with."

Patrick: Yeah. And you know it's trying to get something in tandem with the teacher being passionate about what they've started, what the class is supposed to be about, and then something that throws a wrench into them. And a lot of the times, teachers are like, "That student threw a wrench into my thing. Okay, that's rude. Don't do that again." Some teachers, like you said, "Let's just move on."

And so that's what happened multiple times the very first time I taught aural skills. Some students had questions that I had never thought of. And because this is the first time I ever taught the course, and I don't feel like I'm the best aural skills teacher, I was like, "Ha-ha. Good question. All right. Let's move on." I try to validate them, but like, "What am I supposed to say?"

William: Yeah. But I do appreciate those professors, and it's mostly been graduate professors, which I feel like there's some more give and take at that level where they're like, "Okay." What I appreciated was I felt like they were there in the moment with me. Moving there in my wrestle with information and trying to see beyond, say, even what the reading explored.

And so, yeah, there are those obstacles that are built into the system from curriculum to just the norms where it's like, "Okay. The professor has their lesson. They're going to teach it." But I think it's important that we remember we're probably going to listen one way in a certain environment, and just poke at that at least occasionally because you'll find more stuff. And that's where you can make, I think, the really original discoveries, is challenging the scope of the method, just seeing if there's more or less there than is presented.

Patrick: Yeah. Boy, that's a good way to put it, seeing if there's less or more than is presented. And one of the things is that you'll find more opportunities and you'll find more settings. Maybe that's the key to this all is to when you're in this setting, have this mode. But it's essential then to make sure that you are finding all those other settings or taking classes that have all those other settings. Because if you're getting all of it, where's the harm?

William: Right. Right. And that is the end goal, I think, of everything I do with Approaches to Listening is to make sure that you're hearing in all the ways. And the key to that is to have varied approaches to listening.

So one of the next big questions, the last big question for today, how do you get out of a filter you're stuck in? And I'd like to explore this maybe more specifically because we mentioned, once again, some general suggestions. You talked about taking a break. I think that's a good way. You talked about your practice. You practice until you're not quite where you want to be, and then you're like, "Oh, I'm going to go do something else." And we just talked about making sure you're using all four filters. I think knowing your options is vital. It's like, "How can I listen? Oh, well, I know at least four ways. Let's try each of those." But I'd like to start specifically with practice because I feel like there's two spots I'd really like to talk about how to get out of a filter you're stuck in. And that's in practice and performance. And this goes back to what you were talking about before I changed gears on you. But yeah, what are your thoughts on changing your filter in practice?

Patrick: Well, I mean, it's essential, one. So are you asking how does one do that or just general thoughts?

William: Yeah. Your suggestions on how to do that.

Patrick: Well, to start from a cerebral/philosophical thing, I think that you need to know where reality is. You need to know where your reality is there, and then you need to step out of it. That's very philosophical/cerebral, but it has to start somewhere. Whatever choice you make, whatever you were, wherever you are, there had to be a ground zero to get there. There had to be you know the Big Bang of somewhere that you're at.

So if you're frustrated with something, then you need to figure out what you got frustrated with. That could be more than just listening because, for example, if your hands are just not working, that's frustrating. If your embouchure is just tired, that's frustrating. If your tongue is tired from trying your triple tonguing, that's frustrating. So that's not listening, so to speak. That's more of like your technical thing. So if it's frustrating, find out what got you frustrated. Step away from it. Change that reality. That's the reality of that session. Change that. If in one passage the rubato isn't lining up with your internal clock and you're getting frustrated, you need to know where that came to play. What's the moment that got you there?

For me, what I used to do, for example, when I was studying at Southern Virginia, whenever I would practice, I would record it. Whatever I was doing, I would record it. And then I go back and I would listen to it. But I would be sure that when I'm practicing, that I'm marking where I felt good, bad, where I felt anything, where I was actually like, "This is no longer rote. I'm feeling this right now. Okay, great.” I marked it. So that way, when I'm listening to it, I can be like, "Okay, that happened. What made me feel that way?" So you can have a textbook of your practice. And if you can have a textbook of your practice, then that can encourage you to create realities that you can continue to create realities because then you can memorize the material, which is you, and then you can apply that and continuously apply it as you learn your material, which can only be done by listening to your material.

So that's one way. It's just simply recording, listening, taking the moment, what happened? Let's change it.

William: Yeah. And I think that goes back to this idea of feeling is the thing we're pursuing, that childlike experience. At the end of the day, that's what we want.

But especially as an adult in the field where you have to do the thing consistently, you need those thinking filters to do their job, to write that textbook to show you, hey, here are your on-ramps so that when one of them pops up or when you feel stuck, you're like, "Oh, I remember. There we go." I mean, for me, some of those were like, I got this suggestion from one of my teachers. He said, "Start with a favorite spot. Just connect with the piece before you dive into the spot that you are most scared of.” I had another teacher ask me how I practice the technically the hardest part of a piece. And I was like, "Well, I always practice it first. I do it like this.” I told him how I did it. And he said, "It sounds like you're practicing in anxiety." And I really appreciated that because that was the motivator. And that's how I practiced it until he told me, "Oh, that's how you're practicing it."

So for me, thinking of the why is important, just making sure that's somewhere in there. If I can't find the why, that's a bit of a problem. There's a quote from the author Ursula Le Guin that I really like. She essentially said that some people are so busy doing that they don't have time for being. And so in practice, I think that you have to factor in being, I would say, to every practice session. If you don't, where's that going to take you? And you know how do you be in music? Well, you listen. You prioritize that listening more, I would say, than the immaculate execution of the piece.

And if you don't do that regularly, you're not going to be practiced at it. And one day, you're not going to be able to tap into it. And I think that leads to the spot where you're musically blind, where you can't really connect with what you're doing because you can't be in the moment with it. And then, yeah, you got to figure something out how to get back to that state of being.

Patrick: Yeah. And that was one of the thoughts that I had when I had reviewed the question about getting out of the getting out of the rut in practice was to vary the routine and play something you know. Really, what I do because I'm not the most technical pianist out there, whenever I'm getting into that rut, I kind of go back to some basics. And that's not to say I go back to scales. I don't go back to arpeggios. I don't go back to basics. I go back to what I knew from that moment that I'm trying to create. So if it's a ballad that you're trying to do, if it's Debussy or Ravel that just has these wild moments and these sonorities and these textures that are difficult to master, then I go back to a basic spot where I was able to feel comfortable with it. And then I move a little bit from there.

And so I play that little bit, and then I vary the tempo. And I make sure that in that moment, when I go back to my basics, that I am very aware of what sound I'm creating. Because if you can fix one or two little things, then maybe you're going to feel good about yourself. Maybe you're going to feel good about it. And that's all it is. I mean, you got decades. As long as your technique is good, you've got decades to figure things out.

And there's no fear of missing out because you're not going to become like Emanuel Ax or like all these beautiful pianists, you're not going to become like them. So why is there ever a fear of missing out? And so if you're approaching it with anxiety or fear or with whatever, then for me, I just go back to those basics, find the spot in the song, the moment that I can recreate from the foundational level, and then adapt, focus in with my listening, make sure that I can hear what's going on, and then just fix one or two things.

And it's slow. It has to be slow. If we're doing these really small things with music notes and little keys with strings, all small things, that has to be it has to be small. It has to be slow. It has to be small.

William: You know I think of an experience when I was learning--the title of the piece is alluding me. A Schumann piece, really fast, crossing hands. And my teacher gave me the piece and was like, "You are going to play this slow, dreadfully slow, and only slow." He was a very discerning teacher. He did it until he knew that I felt everything I was doing, not just what my hands were doing, but I felt the music. It's laced with major sevenths, and I felt everything. And I had to feel it slow.

I had to feel it slow before I could feel all those dissonances and all that tension really fast. And then I could. And one day, he was just like you know one day, I took it to him, and I was happy to play it slow. I loved playing this piece slow because I felt it all. And he's like, "Try it up to tempo." And it was just there. But I think it was because I felt it. I knew it internally all the way. I could sync up with it internally, all the way.

It's interesting to talk about feeling slowly because feeling is an in-the-moment thing. But when you're making the music, you dictate how fast it's going. And I think practice that slow feeling, that connecting to something slow is really important for academic musicians because I think we're always feeling the urge to get things faster, to get them ready.

And so, yeah, to connect with feeling, I think taking time slow. I have a routine where I intentionally listen to music at the start of each day. It's like you know 10, 15 minutes, and the goal is just to listen. But I always choose slow pieces because I have no problem. You know, put on something fast and active and everything responds. It's like, "Okay. Well, let's get up. Let's get going." But connecting to the slow stuff, that I think is a rarer skill. And yeah, especially talking about in practice, I think, being able to feel it slowly.

Patrick: Yeah. I think so too. And I think that I do feel and I'm not just saying this because I want to plug your program or anything, but I do feel that listening to the creation, the slow creation that you're making is essential to feeling that slowness. You have to listen to that deathly slow thing that you're working on. And so if we take these savants, the people who can just listen to one thing and then it's in their body and they can replicate it. I mean, that synapse, that mechanism, that circle, that symbiosis is already there. And so for those of us who are not that, we have to create that mechanism and that symbiosis and that we need to create that thing.

And that only happens, just like if you're going to be playing golf or if you're going to be doing ping pong or if you're doing if you're going to be in the Major League Baseball, it all has to start slower. You start with T-ball. You start with your form to get the ball where you want it to go from a stationary position. Once that's mastered, then you have a person underhand toss it to you. No stakes. Once you get that motion, then the line becomes less arced and more straight.

Once you get that motion, it's just building and building and building. But all of those things are starting slow. And to create our cycle, I think we definitely have to start it with slow listening to the vibration of the strings, to the sound that you produced in the past singular measure, and instead of like a full passage, like connect the dots, and it all has to happen slowly. That's what I feel. And I think listening, yeah, that's the key to it.

William: Well, and classical music is so dense. There's so much happening so fast and all the time. And so to me, that idea of incorporating slow feeling, especially at the beginning of learning a piece or returning to that when you know the piece but aren't feeling it is a perfect combination of the thinking and feeling filters, where it's like, "Okay, I need a mechanism to get the piece inside of me." And yeah, stepping away from the pressure to get it up to tempo and just put all the emphasis on feeling that seems like a really, really solid mechanism.

Patrick: Yeah. It's pretty foundational, I would say, especially if you're experienced. Because it's easy to love your hands. Very easy to love the feel of the piano. Very easy to feel the gymnastics of the pedal, with the music and everything. But foundationally, I think that if we can feel the listening, that I think can just take everything to the next level.

William: That does get complicated with part two of this question: How do you get out of a filter of listening in performance? Because in that moment, you don't get to slow down. Everything is rolling.

Patrick: Well, I would say that I'll just go from an acting point of view. An actor is supposed to put the character’s clothes on themselves. Modern theater has the past decade, they've been trying to switch that. And it doesn't bode well with me, and it doesn't create artistry. It creates individual replication at the destruction of the piece. And so for what you're saying or what you're asking, we need to put the piece's clothes on us. Because if you can take a measure and put it inside of you or put its clothes on you, then it's easy to then integrate it.

If you want to be at a level of performance where you do not listen and you're just producing what you've practiced and finding areas that become now like miraculous during a performance that you've never experienced before, you have to start by that slow listening foundation.

You have to be able to find out what the clothes are, start putting on the pieces, and then when you go to perform, you're simply presenting what you have found in the piece and what the piece is supposed to be. So there has to be like give and take, obviously. You can't just like play the Rachmaninoff's third concerto as Ravel. You just can't really do that.

So if you've taken the time to slowly piece together the song in your body, putting on its clothes and keeping your listening engaged, then you will be able to produce that thing that you've practiced and step away from listening because now it is the thing that you've created, and now you're just presenting it. That's more cerebral than I like, but I think that the step to get there is slow feeling in the slow listening practice room.

William: And what would you recommend in the moment if that hasn't taken place?

Patrick: I don't have the answer to that because I have thought about that question. For me, I just focus on my hands. They're my instrument, right? The piano's not the instrument. That's just kind of like the thing that makes the sound. My hands are the instrument. So what I've done in the past is just focus on what I can see, focus on what I can feel, and most of that has to do with my hands. So that's my answer to that. I don't think that I have the answer.

William: I have an answer. It's not the most graceful. But it does make things exciting.

This has been my recipe, especially when I'm in a performance that I know I could connect to or that my collaborative partner could connect to. This is my go-to. I just make a super bold interpretive choice that is new. It could be an extra big ritardando, you know a surprising agogic accent, or just like increase the tempo. But that, to me, there's always this little bit of jarring in the performance where suddenly either me or the other performer we’re both like, "What just happened?" But typically, after that, especially if I'm trying to connect to the moment and to the feeling, it leads us into that and we're like, "Okay." But especially if it stays rote, I think you're stuck. You need to do anything to get out of that rut, especially if it's the beginning and you realize you're stuck and you're like, "What do I do? There's a whole hour, and this is uninteresting to me. What do I do?" It's like, "Okay. Opening of the Pathétique sonata. Let's make these really short notes even shorter." I'm sure there are people in the audience who'd go, "Wow." But they probably heard something they've never heard, and so have you. And then you're like, "Well, what should I do next?"

Patrick: Well, there's the question. That's the fun question.

William: Right. And I feel like the bold choice is your mechanism onto that. It's like at least a mechanism because there are other mechanisms. There's getting backstage, thinking, you know feeling something out, getting help from someone else. But I've had so many experiences with really good collaborative partners where I either throw them just a curveball with a little more curve than usual, or they throw something back, and all of a sudden, everything comes to life.

Patrick: That seems to be the communication that you want in a collaborative performance experience.

William: But yeah, it does take that bold choice with the goal of tapping into listening because once you listen, you'll know what to do next. And that ties into, I think, this final type of question, which is: How do you know if you've established a flexible but strong foundation in your listening?

If you had to measure your listening, because that's one of the major goals of this podcast is like how can we measure listening? Because it's so immeasurable. And to me, how do you know if you have a good, strong, and flexible foundation? And I think it comes down to using all four filters and knowing that you know how to get to each one. Because then, well, how do you get stuck if you know what your options are and how to tap into each option?

Patrick: Yeah. Well, I think that that's the answer right there. I think that my only thought would be this. I think is kind of corny, but I think it does have some metric behind it, is that when the usual filters aren't as usual. And so if you're working on applying different filters and you find that there are ones that you've been working on that all of a sudden are now like you use more. Now, this comes down to your curriculum on how to teach that and how to have somebody replicate it. But from a practical standpoint, if the usual filters are no longer as usual, then that's a pretty clear indication that you have some semblance of control over them. For example, I don't dance. I'm not a dancer. But sometimes when I'm just casually listening while I'm making dinner and I'm listening to some DJ play some old Japanese '80s pop, and something happens with the groove, and I'm like, "Oh, oh." And like I think that's a little key indicator to there was a different filter going on. There was something else happening in my lazy, passive listening. All of a sudden, there was a spark of something else that happened. And so I don't know how to replicate that aside from you know letting it happen. I think that's the key to it, is that you just see that the usual is no longer usual.

William: That's really interesting because the last interview I did with my teacher, Dr. Douglass, he pitched this idea that the exploratory filter can kind of be considered as the beginning and ending of listening. It just envelops everything because that can change how you use any of the filters. And I had a note here that I think using the exploratory filter is one of the special really clear indicators that your listening is strong and flexible.

I think it's the most fresh and organic filter you can apply where you're like, "I don't know what's here." And when you can feel that, it's like, "I'm just going to find what's there." That's always interesting to me as a musician.

Patrick: Yeah. And hopefully I'm not interrupting you, but I played for an area recital where at Southern Virginia, they just give me the music the day of. Like if a student wants to practice, then there's a half hour beforehand for all of the students. That's all we got to practice if we practice. And then we just go through it. For that day, I was really in the moment. I love sight reading. So I love it in general anyways. But like for that moment, I was really feeling like I was creating music with the performer in the moment. And it was really amazing.

And later, one of the pianists who's one of the students here, who is excellent pianist but is terrible at sight reading, asked me how I did it. And I had a bunch of fluffy answers because I really don't know how I do it. But that's why I think gaining sight reading skills is so important and to constantly do that, to practice it because for me, that is an in to exploratory listening in a performance setting is sight reading.

And if you do that in practice, then you can create that more often. For me, that helps me get straight in to and to feel that childlike exploration that then can become the pinnacle, you know?

William: That's so interesting. I also love sight reading, and I've always had this experience where I pick up a piece, and I'm just reading it, and it goes up to here, and then I start learning it, and it goes down. And it takes a long time for it to get back up. And perhaps part of that is just the listening where initially I'm so invested in just discovering what's there. But when you can find that attitude and that approach before a performance, especially when you have practiced it a lot, yeah, that is bound to be an exhilarating performance.

Patrick: I wonder then if it has to do something with the stakes because if you're sight reading in a performance, for example, then stakes are high. So I wonder if there's a mechanism, or I wonder if there's an in to simply changing your physiology in that moment you know to raise the stakes, to fight or flight, do or die. I wonder if there's just a little bit of that that you can train yourself into adding so that way you're in this motion. Controlled, obviously, because that has to be the case. But like when a fighter gets into a ring, a boxer, MMA, even if you're doing forms for taekwondo, aikido, or like karate, the body has to get somewhere to perform in a setting that is kind of like, "Oh, I don't know if they're going to throw something at me. I don't know. I don't know. I got to keep on my toes." So maybe there is that level of like fight or flight, do or die that you need to add in order to get listening to really function properly.

William: Yeah. I'm curious because that also takes me back to those bold choices. Things are stable, but what if they weren't? Once again, the academic setting, in my experience, would frown on that approach.

Patrick: Especially during a performance, yes.

William: Right. But for the musical interest and the music creativity and the listening potential, I think it's worth considering.

Patrick: I think so. I think so.

William: Well, thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Thank you, Patrick, for your time. Always a pleasure to find more information on this, be sure to check out our website. We have more content launching each week there. So thanks again, Patrick, and we'll catch you at the next episode.

Patrick Summers works as an adjunct professor at Washington & Lee University.

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